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 CIVIL SERVICE REFORMS
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Posted on 07-08-05 11:26 AM     Reply [Subscribe]
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one of the prominent and untainted former secretary speaks about the reform.

pls. post your views.

SOURCE : http://www.nepalnews.com

?Service delivery is directly related to the resolution of insurgency?

-- Dr. Dwarika Nath Dhungel


A former Secretary with HMG/Nepal, Dr. Dwarika Nath Dhungel is currently serving as executive director of the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS)?a Kathmandu-based think tank. He spoke to Nepalnews on the proposed amendment in the Civil Service Act through ordinance and other issues. Excerpts:

How do you see the attempts of changing the existing Civil Service Act through an ordinance?

The framers of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 1990, have included a separate provision for the management and regulation of the civil service. Article 124, that deals with these matters, reads as His Majesty?s Government may, in order to run the administration of the country, constitute services as may be required. The constitution, operation and conditions of services therefore shall be as determined by an Act.

As per this provision, the new Civil Service Act 1993 and its Regulations, Civil Service Regulations 1994, were enacted. Had the said provision not included in the new constitution, the government would have continued to operate and mange the civil service through the provisions of the Civil Service Act 2021 BS (1964) which itself had been framed under the provision of the Civil Service Act 1956. Against this backdrop, the attempts of the government to bring about changes in the current Civil Service Act 1993 through the issue of ordinance, when there is no House of Representatives (HoRs), should not be considered something unusual. What is important is to find out the rationale and purpose the government wants to achieve through the issue of the ordinance. Also it has to be seen whether the stakeholders are consulted or total transparency is maintained in the whole process. But the government is yet to come out clearly why it wants to bring about changes in the current Civil Service Act except indicating that it had to amend it as a part of fulfillment of the provisions of the Governance Reform Programme implemented with the support of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).

Government employees? organisations blame the government of trying to tighten its control over civil service through the proposed ordinance. If that were true, what would be its impact?

Answer: Since the government has neither shared the document with me nor I know if the stakeholders including the professionals and former secretaries of the Ministry of General Administration were consulted in the process, it would be pre-mature to comment whether the proposed ordinance contains more controlling measures. The government has maintained the secrecy in the process. So long as the government follows such a system in the process, the civil servants have every right to think that more controlling measures are going to be included in the proposed ordinance.

Therefore, what I would like to urge the government is that if it really believes in the cardinal principles of governance, it should not feel shy to adopt transparency in the law making or revising process and should take all the stakeholders in confidence. Also I would like to suggest different organisations of the civil servants to work in coordination with each other to pressurise the government to initiate and have open and frank discussions with the stakeholders on the proposed changes.

After the royal takeover, the government has created and appointed political personalities as regional and zonal administrators. What could be its impact on the morale of the civil service?

Answer: Indeed there was need for an intermediate level organisation at the field, which would, first of all act via between Singdhurbar and district and sub-district level offices of the government and corporate sector. Secondly, would perform the supervisory role in relation to these district and sub-district offices. So what was required was the professional assessment and study of a need for a supervisory unit at the zonal in the context of the existence of the zonal level organisation of the Nepal Police unit in the absence of the overall representative of the government at the zonal level, i.e. Zonal Commissioner which since 1990 has become the part of the history. Instead, without a real sing the need and importance of the supervisory level unit and converting it as part of the administrative hierarchy, the position of the zonal administrator has been created as the Antenna of the Palace Secretariat, a system the post 1990 government had abolished.

The creation of the regional administration with the senior most civil servant as its head was the right decision to correct the distortion in the administration, especially in its hierarchical structure. So there was need to strengthen and clarify its position, roles and responsibilities, especially its supervisory and coordinating role and integrating the economy of various ecological regions falling its administrative areas.

The King making political appointments at the regional and zonal administrative level is not in line with the principles laid down by the current constitution, Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 1990. Furthermore, unlike the position of the past regional administrator, the current regional administrators are given the status of the heads of constitutional bodies thereby making costlier to the state coffer. Due to these facts it is natural on the part of the people to believe that the sole purpose the new government wanted to achieve through the new arrangement was to create a situation for the palace to have its own ears and eyes or Antenna at the field rather than ensuring effective delivery of services.

Another anomaly created by the new system has been the revival of the system and structure discarded after the restoration of the multi-party system, i.e. the institution of the Zonal Commissioner. The position of the zonal administrator is nothing but the same old wine in the new bottle. Furthermore the creation of fourteen zonal administrative set up has put additional burden to the national coffer in a situation when the country is facing sever resource crunch. What was required, was only one not two supervisory level organisational units at the field level with a clear line of command from Singhdurabar and clear roles and responsibilities.

Thus by initiating a new system, which the creation of the additional tier without establishing a clear line command with Singhdurbar, the government has done nothing except creation of confusion, duplication of efforts and wastage of scarce resource. So, I feel that the new arrangement would not last long and one of the two, may be the zonal level structure, will have to go. The system of the political appointment to the post of the regional administrator would have to be replaced by the system of sending a senior bureaucrat, unless the future government would like to continue the system initiated by the King by sending its followers, i.e. the followers of the party in government.

The government is said to be cutting down the number of civil servants as per the recommendation of the ADB-funded Governance Reform Programme? Is it the right thing to do at a time when the number of security personnel is going up?

There is nothing like the tailor made size with regard to the civil service. Its number is primarily dependent upon the volume of work and automation process within the organisation. Also the government could not behave like a baniya ( a merchant), while determining or slashing the number of the positions within the civil service. The government has to create or manage to create the job opportunity for its citizens.

The Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC), 1991, had recommended to bring down the size of the civil service within a period of three years by 25 percent. This figure had been arrived on the basis of the vacancy that always remains within the civil service at a time (i.e. around 15 percent) and introducing automation in the civil service. But the government except accepting its recommendation in principle did not pursue many recommendations, which if implemented would have improved the productivity and effectiveness of the civil service. Rather, the commission was treated as a bad boy for no fault of its, by the civil servants and others when the then GP Koirala government did decide to retire more than three thousand civil servants in Nov.1992 without making an effort to know whether the Commission had made such recommendation. Thus the government should not be swayed by what it has committed to the multinational agencies without realising how much adverse effect the cutting the size of the civil service would have in the context of people having difficulty in finding out bread winning opportunity in the government and non-government sectors in the present conflict situation-- also in the context of the increasing number of security personnel.

How effective could be the efforts of the government to improve service delivery mechanism post Feb. 1 when there are no popularly elected bodies across the country including the legislature?

With regard to the effectiveness in the service delivery mechanism prior to and after Feb.1, 2005, I do not think there has been any substantive change. Because first of all there is no presence of the government in the rural areas and it remains confined to a few kilometers periphery of the district headquarters. Secondly, long before Feb 1, the governments of the day had withdrawn the units involved in the service delivery from their respective places to the district headquarters leaving an open space for the insurgents to fill in. Thirdly, due to the shortsightedness of the S.B. Deuba Government mainly on the ground that most of the local government bodies were under the control of the Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist and Leninist), the tenure of the local bodies was not extended upon the completion of their term in July 2002 and as such whatever place occupied by these bodies at the rural areas were also left open to the CPN (Maoist) to occupy. No body now knows when the election to the local bodies would take place, even if the government has declared that it wants to have elections for the municipalities within next one year. The political parties, too, in terms of their effective presence, are confined to urban areas and have not been able to penetrate to the rural areas. In such a context, even if the King hands over power to the political parties tomorrow, which is just an imagination only at the current moment, there is not going to be any change in the service delivery capacity of the government. Nor the restoration of the dissolved House of Representatives (HoR)-- the main demand of the political parties, which they claim would put back the derailed constitution on track?is likely to bring about significant improvement in the service delivery. The effectiveness of the government in this matter, i.e. service delivery is directly dependent upon the resolution of the on-going insurgency led by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), for which neither the present King?s government has come out with a clear strategy nor the political parties have a clarity or a clear road map. nepalnews.com by Jul 08 05


 


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